New York is sweltering in the summer heat, and Harlem is close to the boiling point. To Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, at times it seems as if the whole world has gone mad. Trying, as always, to keep some kind of peace - their legendary nickel-plated Colts very much in evidence - Coffin Ed and Grave Digger find themselves pursuing two completely different cases through a maze of knifings, beatings, and riots that threatens to tear Harlem apart.

The Big Gold Dream: A Grave Digger & Coffin Ed Novel

The Big Gold Dream is the explosive and shocking hardboiled classic that explores the shadowy underbelly of New York as a urban civil war erupts on the side streets of Harlem, pitting murderers and prostitutes against corrupt politicians and racist white detectives. Detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson attempt to maintain some kind of order - in the neighborhood they have sworn to protect - in a world gone mad around them.

All Shot Up: A Grave Digger & Coffin Ed Novel

A golden Cadillac big enough to cross the ocean has been seen sailing along the streets of Harlem. A hit-and-run victim's been hit so hard she got embedded in the wall of a convent. A shootout with three heistmen dressed as cops has left an important politician in a coma - and a lot of money missing. And Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson are the ones who have to piece it all together.

Cotton Comes to Harlem: A Grave Digger & Coffin Ed Novel

Con man Deak O'Hara is out of the state penitentiary and back on the street working the scam of a lifetime. The $87,000 he has schemed to get has been hijacked and hidden in a bale of cotton. Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones are on everyone's trail in one of their most entertaining thrillers.

The Real Cool Killers: A Grave Digger & Coffin Ed Novel

Many people had reasons for killing Galen, a big Greek with too much money and too great a liking for young black girls. But there are complications - like a drug addict, a disappearing suspect, and the fact that Coffin Ed's daughter is up to her neck in the whole explosive business.

The Heat's On: A Grave Digger & Coffin Ed Novel

From the start, nothing goes fright for Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones. They are disciplined for use of excessive force. Grave Digger is shot, and his death announced in a hoax radio bulletin. Bodies pile up faster than Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones can run. Yet, try as they might, they always seem to be one hot step behind the cause of all the mayhem: three million dollars' worth of heroine and a simple albino called Pinky.

The Crazy Kill: A Grave Digger & Coffin Ed Novel

Outside the apartment where a wake is going on, the manager of the A&P across the street is robbed. Reverend Short, a storefront preacher addicted to opium and brandy, is watching from a bedroom window in the flat. He leans out too far and falls, but a huge bread basket, sitting outside the bakery below, saves him. Back inside, he says he sees a vision of a dead man. Outside, in the very basket Short landed in, lies the body of Valentine Haines. Who murdered Val? It is up to Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson to find out.

And Sometimes I Wonder About You: A Leonid McGill Mystery

In the fifth Leonid McGill novel, Leonid finds himself in an unusual pickle of trying to balance his cases with his chaotic personal life. Leonid's father is still out there somewhere, and his wife is in an uptown sanitarium trying to recover from the deep depression that led to her attempted suicide in the previous novel. His wife's condition has put a damper on his affair with Aura Ullman, his girlfriend.

The High Window

Philip Marlowe's on a case: his client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. That's the simple part. It becomes more complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. That's also unlucky for a private investigator, because leaving a trail of corpses around LA gets cops' noses out of joint.

The Lady in the Lake

Derace Kingsley's wife ran away to Mexico to get a quickie divorce and marry a Casanova-wannabe named Chris Lavery. Or so the note she left her husband insisted. Trouble is, when Philip Marlowe asks Lavery about it he denies everything and sends the private investigator packing with a flea lodged firmly in his ear. But when Marlowe next encounters Lavery, he's denying nothing - on account of the two bullet holes in his heart.

Rose Gold: An Easy Rawlins Mystery

In this new mystery set in the Patty Hearst era of radical black nationalism and political abductions, a black ex-boxer self-named Uhuru Nolica, the leader of a revolutionary cell called Scorched Earth, has kidnapped Rosemary Goldsmith, the daughter of a weapons manufacturer, from her dorm at UC Santa Barbara. If they don't receive the money, weapons, and apology they demand, "Rose Gold" will die - horribly and publicly.

All I Did Was Shoot My Man: A Leonid McGill Mystery, Book 4

Seven years ago, Zella Grisham came home to find her man, Harry Tangelo, in bed with her friend. The weekend before, $6.8 million had been stolen from Rutgers Assurance Corp., whose offices are across the street from where Zella worked. Zella didn't remember shooting Harry, but she didn't deny it either. The district attorney was inclined to call it temporary insanity - until the police found $80,000 from the Rutgers heist hidden in her storage space. For reasons of his own, Leonid McGill is convinced of Zella's innocence. But as he begins his investigation, his life begins to unravel.

The Double: Spero Lucas

The job seems simple enough: retrieve the valuable painting - "The Double" - Grace Kinkaid's ex-boyfriend stole from her. It's the sort of thing Spero Lucas specializes in: finding what's missing, and doing it quietly. But Grace wants more. She wants Lucas to find the man who humiliated her - a violent career criminal with a small gang of brutal thugs at his beck and call.

The Guards

Still stinging from his unceremonious ouster from the Garda Siochana, and staring at the world through the smoky bottom of his beer mug, Jack Taylor is stuck in Galway with nothing to look forward to. He is teetering on the brink of his life's sharpest edges, his memories of the past cutting deep into his soul and his prospects for the future non-existent.

Bad Boy Brawly Brown: An Easy Rawlins Mystery

Easy Rawlins is out of the investigation business and as far away from crime as a black man can be in 1960s Los Angeles. But living around desperate men means life gets complicated sometimes. When an old friend gets in enough trouble to ask for Easy's help, he finds he can't refuse. Bad Boy Brawly Brown is the masterful crime novel that Walter Mosley's legions of fans have been waiting for. This book marks the return of a master at the top of his form.

Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore: A Novel

In this scorching, mournful, often explicit, and never less than moving literary novel by the famed creator of the Easy Rawlins series, Debbie Dare, a black porn queen, has to come to terms with her sordid life in the adult entertainment industry after her tomcatting husband dies in a hot tub. Electrocuted. With another woman in there with him. Debbie decides she just isn't going to "do it anymore". But executing her exit strategy from the porn world is a wrenching and far from simple process.

Whoreson: The Story of a Ghetto Pimp

From one of the most revolutionary writers of the twentieth century comes the uncensored and gritty novel that inspired today's street lit and hip-hop culture. After my ninth birthday, I began to really understand the meaning of my name. I began to understand just what my mother was doing for a living. There was nothing I could do about it, but even had I been able to, I wouldn't have changed it.

Little Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery, Book 12

We last saw Easy in 2007’s Blonde Faith, fighting for his life after his car plunges over a cliff. True to form, the tough WWII veteran survives, and soon his murderous sidekick Mouse has him back cruising the mean streets of L.A., in all their psychedelic 1967 glory, to look for a young black man, Evander "Little Green" Noon, who disappeared during an acid trip. Fueled by an elixir called Gator’s Blood, brewed by the conjure woman Mama Jo, Easy experiences a physical, spiritual, and emotional resurrection, but peace and love soon give way to murder and mayhem.

The Right Mistake

From award-winning author Walter Mosley comes the third work featuring hardened ex-con turned street philosopher Socrates Fortlow. Organizing other troubled individuals, Socrates starts the Thursday Night Thinkers' Meeting, in which members discuss "the world and what would be the right thing to do."

Blonde Faith

Easy Rawlins, L.A.'s most reluctant detective, comes home one day to find Easter, the daughter of his friend, Christmas Black, left on his doorstep. Easy knows that this could only mean that ex-marine Black is probably dead, or will be soon. But Easter's appearance is only the beginning, as Easy is immersed in a sea of problems.

Known to Evil: A Leonid McGill Mystery

Leonid McGill-the protagonist introduced in The Long Fall, the book that returned Walter Mosley to bestseller lists nationwide - is still fighting to stick to his reformed ways while the world around him pulls him in every other direction. He has split up with his girlfriend, Aura, because his new self won't let him leave his wife - but then Aura's new boyfriend starts angling to get Leonid kicked out of his prime, top-of-the­skyscraper office space.

When the Thrill Is Gone

How can Leonid McGill say no to the beautiful young woman who walks into his office with a stack of cash? She's an artist, she tells him, who's escaped from poverty via marriage to a rich collector who keeps her on a stipend. But she says she fears for her life, and needs Leonid's help. Though Leonid knows better than to believe every word, this isn't a job he can afford to turn away, even as he senses that - if his family's misadventures don't kill him first - sorting out the woman's crooked tale will bring him straight to death's door.

The Cut: Spero Lucas, Book 1

Spero Lucas has a new line of work. Since he returned home after serving in Iraq, he has been doing special investigations for a defense attorney. He's good at it, and he has carved out a niche: recovering stolen property, no questions asked. His cut is 40 percent. But is any cut worth your family, your lover, your life?

This complete collection includes all of the published stories of Eudora Welty. There are 41 stories in all, including those in the earlier collections A Curtain of Green, The Wide Net, The Golden Apples, and The Bride of the Innisfallen, as well as previously uncollected stories.

Publisher's Summary

New York is sweltering in the summer heat, and Harlem is close to the boiling point. To Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, at times it seems as if the whole world has gone mad. Trying, as always, to keep some kind of peace - their legendary nickel-plated Colts very much in evidence - Coffin Ed and Grave Digger find themselves pursuing two completely different cases through a maze of knifings, beatings, and riots that threatens to tear Harlem apart.

First off, there could not be a better narrator for these Chester Himes books. Dion Graham brings them to life more than if you were reading the book yourself. This was my very first introduction to Himes, and I am glad I started here although someone who likes a traditional story might dislike this one. This book is very wild and disjointed. Many of the chapters do not fit with each other to make a coherent picture. I've laughed out loud while reading this book, but also its sad in many ways. I was reading this book simultaneously while reading a book about soldiers in WWII. So, I had this book which is about all the hustlers and dregs of society and all of America's racism boiling over, then the other book about what heroes in this country look and act like. You should not read this book if you want to feel good about the country. If you want to see seething black rage towards whites, rampant prostitution, and violence... then this is good. With that said, I think one could miss the theme of this book. It's overall message. Without top notch writing and narration, it would have been worthless trash.

I'm almost finished with my first listen to Chester Himes' Coffin Ed/Gravedigger books. Chester Himes was one of the predecessors to many detective novelists today (along with those before him, i.e. Chandler, Hammett, etc) who was largely ignored by the media due to his color. Only now, due to the resurgence of awareness AND admiration for minority writers (Walter Mosley, Junot Diaz, etc.) and the acceptance of minority voices in all forms of literature, are Himes' mysteries being reprinted and now voiced by Dion Graham. The stories themselves can appear as campy pulp fiction, but Himes' writing, and Graham's voice overshadow any cartoonish happenings with Ed & Gravedigger. It's really good to see that Audible & the publishing industry are opening doors and making one of the forgotten writers on the 20th century available to all of us.

The writer kept jumping all over the place. It was very hard to follow.

What could Chester Himes have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Too many interludes and not enough follow through. I listened to this book twice. I'm not sure why there were so many random events with no real connection to the end story. It was like listening to a person who is trying to tell me a story but has difficulty staying on topic and finishing a complete thought. Mr Himes, please make sure you bring the story full circle. I'm left wandering how most of the interludes related.

Have you listened to any of Dion Graham’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I LOVE Dion Graham! I purchased majority of Mr. Himes books because Dion narrated them. When it comes to fictional reading Dion is one of the best. I can't wait unti his next read.

What character would you cut from Blind Man with a Pistol?

The old preacher and his wives...what was that about.The murder of the old pimp and wife incident...no closure on that one either.The woman receiving the tv...not sure why he mention this either.. Who killed the white guy?....Any character he added that didn't really have any closure to. I'm just frustrated and disappointed by this book.

Any additional comments?

Too many interludes and not enough follow through. I listen to this book twice. I'm not sure why there were so many random events with no real connection to the storyline. It was like listening to a person who is trying to tell mea story but has difficulty staying on topic and finishing a complete thought.

a great book, originally published (in translation) in france, and with an ironic undertow, or overtone, that the present narrator basically ignores. annoyingly, you also get mispronunciations, like "cretin" (a moron) read as "Cretan" (a person from Crete), that make the AUTHOR appear as an illiterate, when it is basically the reader/presenter who is fraught with that problem.

thankfully, audible offers a complete set of chester himes's novels, all of which are great. i know, because i have read them. he is, without doubt, one of the classic masters of the american crime novel. but i feel that he is being presented here, so very nearly completely, largely because he was a black writer --- in other words, as an exercise in political correctness. why else would dashiell hammett, raymond chandler, james m.cain, and a slew of other classic crime writers be missing in audible so d+++ near completely?

having himes's very finely tuned novels read by such a masculine black voice identifies the novels as "black" but disallows for some of the literary characteristics to emerge, chief among them the author's humour and irony. chester himes may be writing stories set in a black milieu -- a very largely imaginary black milieu, originally created for the benefit of his french readers, since himes stood not a snow flake's chance in hell of having his books published in the US -- but when he writes novels in the mickey spillane mould, he does so almost tongue-in-cheek, exposing the injustices that "naturally" existed in a world divided into "black" and "white", back home.

bringing these stories "home" to america in translation, or perhaps in their original language -- since himes did not write them in french, they only appeared in french translation, and were not necessarily even intended to be published in english, ever, or certainly not at the time --- they needed perhaps a black voice that sounded a little less strident, a little less like some cop show presenter, but rather, a more wistful voice, like that of a reader who had just finished reading the uncle remus stories. then again, i'm not suggesting that chester himes should be turned into some kind of benign teller of fairy tales.

maybe a voice like eddie murphy's would have helped --- someone more sprightly, more willing to change his vocal range, or willing to giggle or in some other way suggest the different types of register found in this author.

BUT -- you can always try again, can't you? that's the beauty of audible, that different readers can offer different perspectives or alternative takes on the same book.

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